Toilets
by Hannanora-Potter
Summary: One shot, during Rising. It's Dr Weir's first day at the new job and it's not going well. During power problems, shield failures and impending doom she gets asked the one question we all want to ask and she doesn't want to hear: just where exactly are the toilets in Atlantis?


**Story: **Toilets

**Summary:** One shot, during Rising. It's Dr Weir's first day at the new job and it's not going well. During power problems, shield failures and impending doom she gets asked the one question we all want to ask: just where exactly _are_ the toilets in Atlantis?

**Spoilers/Timeline:** No spoilers, at the start of Stargate Atlantis

**Disclaimer:** Stargate Atlantis is owned by MGM and whoever else actually owns it… I certainly don't!

**Additional:** '_blah'_ = thoughts

"_Blah"_ = Czech

**Authors Notes: **Why is it I can only write stupid Stargate Atlantis stories?! Ah well, hopefully this is short and fun and it _is_ a question that keeps bugging me. Enjoy!

**Toilets:**

Dr Weir stared about her, feelings a confusing mix of wonder, fear and disbelief. She had never dreamed that stepping through the Stargate to emerge in a different galaxy would lead to _this._

Atlantis breathed about her, lights flickering on and off as people accessed different systems. Consoles unused for millennia only grunted slightly before whirring up to life as though they had never been off and whirling dust sheets revealed more wonders every minute.

It was unlike any other building Elizabeth had seen in her life, both on Earth and in the extensive mission files she had been privy to as head of the SGC. Even the remote outpost in Antarctica had been a scarce shadow of the crystalline beauty around her now. It was clean and direct, but managed to be minimalistic without the cold harshness of any similar designs on Earth.

Looking at one console she carefully traced the simple design etched into the operating system. It seemed that whoever the Ancients were, they liked to live their life surrounded by beauty and their technology reflected this. Elizabeth almost shuddered as she thought back to the harsh, bulky concrete look of both the SGC and the Prometheus. Elegance was sorely lacking in both.

But as Elizabeth turned towards the window, she really did shudder. The outside world, or at least what they could see of it, could be called beautiful in its own way. In fact, Elizabeth was sure that at any other time, in any other place, she would have found the sights of the undersea world to be utterly amazing and relaxing.

But when said water was the cause of your imminent doom... well, it detracted from the view slightly.

The sounds of furious, tense and panicked chatter flooded the 'gate room, much like the freezing cold sea water would soon if they didn't find a way to save the city. Teams of scientists were poring over this console and that, frantically trying to find some little subroutine, some little piece of information that would lead the way to the salvation of Atlantis. The marines just stood to one side, watching somewhat bemusedly at all the commotion going on, but no less tense.

Elizabeth sighed and massaged her temples. This was quickly becoming the worst day of her life.

And it wasn't going to get any better, she realised with a sigh, as one of the Lieutenants came up to her and coughed politely.

Elizabeth looked at the man, cursing the fact that she didn't know everyone's name yet. Whilst most of the scientists had come with her from Antarctica, a lot of the Marines were newly picked from the ranks of the SGC. This one was definitely new and Elizabeth was somewhat ashamed to say that, with his military style brown hair and grey uniform, he could have been any one of her new personnel.

'_Well,_' Elizabeth sighed, '_at least I can actually tell what rank he is._' That was something she certainly hadn't been able to do a few months ago. "Yes, Lieutenant...?"

"Wainwright, ma'am," the marine said, answering her silent question. "We have a slight... issue."

"Issue?" she repeated, raising an eyebrow, whilst inside her there was a surge of dread. '_Oh God, what on earth could it possibly be now?_' Elizabeth wondered, exasperated. Weren't they going to get a single break? '_One of the naquadah generators is about to explode... or the planet is radioactive and we're all going to die whether we save the city or not... or they've discovered a primitive alien species living in the basement and they've not taken kindly to our presence and are going on a mad killing spree...'_ She shook her head, almost smiling. She doubted anything the lieutenant was going to say would really shock her now.

Or perhaps not.

"Yes, ma'am, we...er, can't find any... _facilities._"

Elizabeth stared at him.

"You mean to say," she said slowly, after a rather considerable pause where the marine's face had gone from pale, to red, to puce in embarrassment, "that you can't find any _toilets_?"

Wainwright coughed, face still an unhealthy shade of mauve, and said "Yes, ma'am."

Elizabeth felt like laughing. Who the hell worries about toilets when the ceiling is quite literally going to crash in above them?

She only realised she had said that out loud when the marine, with another one of those apologetic coughs, replied, "Well, Dr Weir, it's the scientists. We've been here for 4 or 5 hours now and some of them are... well," – Elizabeth hadn't thought poor Wainwright's face could get any redder, but it had – "they _need_ to go and are starting to complain."

Of course they were. Because what more didn't she need other than scientists who were desperate for the men's room. She sighed. "Well, what do you do on off world missions?" she asked. Assigning toilets was certainly not something she'd ever envisioned having to do back when she was imagining her new life in Atlantis.

"Well, ma'am, we are either out in the field" – which Elizabeth took to meant that they went behind a bush, or whatever passed for a bush on that particular planet – "or we're staying with the indigenous population, so we use their facilities..."

"... both of which are not possible here," Elizabeth concluded, before sighing again, this time in frustration. Why had no one ever pointed out to her that she was crazy? Because she certainly had to be, to have taken this job. "Why can't you just choose a room and let them... you know? We'll sort it out properly if we found out how to survive the next few hours." Hint, hint: they had slightly bigger things to worry about than choosing living spaces.

But Wainwright was already shaking his head. "We've tried that, Dr Weir, but the scientists always kick up a fuss. Dr McKay" – Oh, big surprise, it came down to her chief scientist – "kept ranting about how the city was connected up all inside the walls and that it was possible to short out a vital piece of technology that would cause all to die a horrible, painful death. Ma'am."

Not for the first time – and probably not for the last, she realised now – Elizabeth felt like banging her head repeatedly against the wall. She almost wished the shield would collapse – then at least she wouldn't have to deal with this. "What did he suggest you do then?"

"He told me that we could only, ahem, urinate in a place that had been properly analysed by a team of scientists first."

"But refused to give you any scientists."

"Yes."

"Right then. Where's Dr McKay now?"

~_Toilets~ Toilets~ Toilets~ Toilets~ Toilets~ Toilets~ Toilets~ Toilets~ Toilets~_

Dr Meredith Rodney McKay was in a state of panic. Of course, he quite often was – in some ways he quite liked the feeling of ever present imminent doom that often surrounded him – it was a bit like a strange security blanket. However at present he had only a few limited hours to unpick millions of lines of alien computer code, with minimal power and a limited understanding of the ancient language in order to save an ancient city and not be drowned in some distant galaxy by a few million tonnes of sea water.

So he thought he could be forgiven for being a little bit snappy when the subject of finding a suitable men's room came up.

"Yes, yes," he snapped at Dr Weir, rushing from one diagnostic screen to another to verify some readings, "I know that's a problem but I don't have time to do anything now or, have you forgotten, but the city's shield is about to collapse on us and we're all going to die?"

Dr Weir sighed. Rodney (he'd be damned if he was going to let anyone know his real name was Meredith) imagined that she was giving him that 'look' – the one that said he was being unreasonable and she didn't have time for this – but he couldn't see because he was too busy looking at the screen. '_No, that deals with the lights, nothing to do with the city. Damn._'

"The point is, Rodney," Dr Weir was saying behind him, "that you don't know _when_ the city's shields are going to fail."

"No," Rodney agreed irritably, bringing up another system on the screen, "which means it could go any second now, so if you don't mind...?"

But inevitably she did mind. "Which means that it might not fail for another day or two," she pointed out. "Do you honestly expect everyone to '_hold it in_' for 24 hours? 48 hours?" She made a face. "I don't think even _you_ could do that."

So she was trying to get him to do something else now – as if he wasn't busy enough as it was. "Look, I'm sure there are some toilets around here somewhere... just need to go out and find them," he said.

"Except you told us we had to stop exploring the city."

Oh. Damn. She had him there. Rodney swore mentally. "Well... just, I don't know..."

Inevitably Weir sensed an opportunity for she jumped right in. "So all you need to do is just find one room; _one room_, Rodney. Surely that can't be too difficult?"

Rodney made a derisive sound. "Oh, yeah, why don't you just ask me for the meaning of life while you're at it?" he snapped, stumbling around one of the annoying lesser technicians that always seemed good for nothing but taking up space. "Move!"

"Look, Rodney, I'm sorry but if you don't find a room then we're just going to have to choose one and risk it."

'_Oh dear God, I'm surrounded by idiots._'

"Look, Dr Weir, I don't think you get it," he said, actually looking away from one of his precious screens. "We don't know much about this city, but what we do know is that _everything_ in this city is intrinsically linked to everything else. If you… er, do your _business_ in any room you choose then you could irreparably damage vital pieces of equipment, destroying whole _systems_ and then BAM! The shields snap out like a light and we all die a horrible watery death."

Weir made a funny motion with her hands that Rodney was quite familiar with after years of working with supervisors who nothing about the complexities of modern science; she was trying not to strangle him. "Then you need to give me someone to check out some rooms."

If he believed in a deity right now then Rodney would be looking upwards and praying for less stupidity in the world. "Well, I'd love to help but I can't be in two places at once and I'm sure we can _all_ agree that my talents are best served saving everybody's lives, yes?" And he bent back over the consoles once more.

Weir made another strangled sound and then he heard her take a deep breath. "All I said was that we need _someone_ Rodney; it doesn't have to be you."

Rodney opened his mouth to respond that of _course_ it had to be him and then he stopped to think. It didn't _have_ to be him. And, really, wasn't searching for toilets the most menial degrading job for a scientist imaginable? Yet at the same time it was totally vital, for his peace of mind if nothing else.

So, who could he assign to such a demeaning task?

"Hey, what's the name of that Czech guy?"

~_Toilets~ Toilets~ Toilets~ Toilets~ Toilets~ Toilets~ Toilets~ Toilets~ Toilets~_

Dr Radek Zalenka, Czech physicist, one of a select few brilliant enough to be chosen to travel across the universe to the Pegasus galaxy on a mission to push the understanding of the Universe to its limits, was searching for the men's room.

Suffice it to say, he was not impressed.

"_Bloody Rodney McKay,_" he grumbled in his native Czech, holding out a nifty little scanner he had found. The two marines assigned to him exchanged glances as they walked behind, probably wondering either if he was quite sane or if they were supposed to respond somehow. He ignored them.

What he _should_ be doing right now was helping save the city from total annihilation. Within maybe a few minutes the shields could collapse and they would all drown. He shuddered. Drowning was not a nice way to go, but he would like to have thought that if he _was_ going to die out here in a distant galaxy then he would have liked to go out doing something heroic, fighting to rescue the city to the last.

Not finding a suitable place for nervous personnel to relieve themselves.

"Dr Zalenka?" one of the marines asked.

He turned back to them, still scowling. One of them indicated a room on their left.

"Yes, yes, yes, let's have a look at this one," he snapped, backtracking and stomping into the room in a fair impression of a sulky teenager. One of the marines rolled his eyes but again they made no comment. Apparently they were used to working with whinging scientists.

Striding into the small room, Radek got out a handy little diagnostic tool he'd nabbed from the SGC and began checking out the room for anything resembling electronics. Swearing in the Czech the whole time, of course.

"_What was the SGC thinking when they decided to send him along on this trip?"_ he wondered as he crouched down and scanned the floor. "_I've never met a more socially inept man in my life and I'm a scientist! Maybe I should start a betting pool on how long it will take someone to horribly murder him in his sleep._"

"Did you find anything, doc?" Marine A asked him.

Had he found something? That was a question with many thousand possible answers. Grumbling aside, Radek had never seen such amazing technology in his whole life. Working as part of the Antarctica team he had been given a glimpse of elegance and sophistication that the Ancients worked into everything they did, but this… Every surface seemed to be riddled with networking of some kind, delicate connections in the most incredible network he had ever glimpsed in his life; who knew what this city could do!

But had he found somewhere safe for everyone to pee?

"_Ne_ – no," he corrected, with a sigh. "Let's check the next room."

And so it continued for room after room. By the time the small group entered their 12th room Radek had long since stopped admiring the Ancients' way with technology and begun instead despairing of them. "_Can't they build one _single_ room without riddling it with irreplaceable technology?_" he muttered to himself. Marines A and B were long since used to him muttering irritably in Czech by now and just ignored him. It could be that they were fine to use these rooms as temporary latrines but with the city in the delicate state it was they couldn't take the chance.

Entering room number 12 Radek groaned; it looked exactly like all the others. He got out his scanner anyway although he knew what it would say. "_This is ridiculous; I should be out helping save the city but am instead searching for toilets that just don't exist! Maybe the Ancients evolved so that they didn't need toilets anymore and this is just a fool's errand._"

"_Bloody Rodney McKay_."

"Nothing in this room either, Dr Zalenka?" Marine B asked with a resigned sigh.

"Actually there's too much, that's the problem," Radek said with a similarly weary sigh.

Marine A scowled. "Did they not need toilets or something?" he asked in a weird echo of Radek's earlier thoughts.

Marine B laughed. "Maybe they just went over the balconies."

Marine A joined in laughing whilst Radek shook his head. Toilet humour. Great. Although they _were_ looking for toilets, so he supposed it was inevitable. "Yes, yes, very funny," he said, scowling. "Let's keep moving shall we?"

Still laughing the Marines began moving back towards the door when one of them tripped and knocked into one of the walls… and kept on falling.

"What the hell?" Marine A said, whilst Radek swore in Czech, both rushing over to where Marine B had disappeared.

Or not disappeared, as the case turned out. Apparently knocking into the walls had triggered the release for some sort of hidden room panel. Marine B was now sprawled on the floor of a small white room nursing his head with a scowl.

"What do you think it is Doc?" Marine A asked, staring round the room in consternation, hands gripping his P-90 suspiciously even though it was clear no one was inside.

At first Radek didn't know how to answer him; there was, after all, nothing in the room to make clear its purpose. Or so he thought. "What's that?" he asked and, without waiting for a response, clambered over the still groaning Marine B to further inspect the only object in the room.

It too was white, which was probably why he hadn't noticed it at first. It resembled a large white bowl although it was made of some alloy that Radek – or his handy scanner – wasn't familiar with. It was also, unbelievably, actually hovering a foot off the ground although Radek could see no obvious means of supporting it. His scanner was detecting some interesting minor power outputs however which he would need to go over with more detail at a time when they weren't racing against the clock to save the city/find toilets.

Toilets… '_I wonder if…_'

"What is it, doc?" Marine A repeated, obviously noticing the change in expression on Radek's face. Marine B had managed to get up off the floor at that point although he already had a massive bruise blossoming on his temple. Apparently he had hit the hovering bowl when he fell through the opening door.

"I think," Radek said slowly, "that this might be what the Ancients used as a toilet."

They stared at him. "You're joking," Marine B said flatly, staring at the hovering bowl incredulously. "There's no plumbing or anything – how can everything… you know, get out?"

Radek shrugged. "It's the Ancients; I doubt they would do anything conventionally. There are a few different devices in there; they probably vaporise or convert anything into something else – energy maybe."

"'Probably'?" Marine A repeated dubiously. "We've spent all this time dismissing nice empty room after nice empty room to use as a latrine because you've been whining about all the wonderful technology we could damage and then you want us to go ahead and use an unknown piece of technology on a _guess_?"

Radek tried not to feel insulted. "It's a very good guess – look, these readings show that whilst there is some technology in the bowl it's made of different components than those in the main room."

"Meaning…?"

"Meaning it's designed to be waterproof."

"Oh." They all looked at the bowl thoughtfully.

"Well, there's only one way to find out," Marine A said suddenly and thrust his P-90 into Marine B's hands who sniggered. Radek stared at him in bemusement and then horror as he began unzipping his trousers.

"Můj bože, what are you doing?" he asked, alarmed.

"Well, Doc, ain't all you scientists about _experimentation_ and whatnot? Besides," he added with a grin, "I've been dying to go for a couple of hours now."

Suffice it to say, what followed wasn't one of Radek's fondest memories.

"_Incredible_," Radek said a minute later, watching his scanner as what was now undoubtedly Atlantis' version of a 'toilet' did its job. Switching back to English he added to the bemused Marines, "It's performing a full matter-energy conversion, quite an incredible feat, simply astounding!"

Alas, the intricacies of the incredible science was lost on the two Marines. "So it's definitely a toilet?" Marine B interrupted looking impatient.

"Yes, yes, it's toilet," Radek agreed, flapping impatient hands at him. "But this technology, it's amazing!"

And again; no response. "We can freak out about how incredibly amazing the toilet is later," Marine A said, rolling his eyes. "But don't you have a city to save?"

"Oh. Yes, I do," Radek said, feeling disappointment flood him briefly before the full face of reality sunk back in. '_And this is what Rodney bloody McKay has reduced me to; feeling excited about a toilet. I really hate him._'

"Zelenka to Dr Weir," he said over the radio.

"This is Dr Weir, go ahead Dr Zelenka," came her crackly voice over the radio.

"I have managed to locate what passes for a toilet somewhere on the lower levels."

"Thank goodness," she responded, relief clearly evident in her voice. "We've got a lot of very desperate people here, Doctor. Can you – "

"What was that? You've found a toilet?"

Radek rolled his eyes as McKay's voice interrupted over their conversation. "Yes, McKay, believe it or not, I am capable of – "

"That's not what I meant!" McKay interrupted hastily. "Where is it?"

There was a pause. And then Weir's voice came back over the radio. "Rodney… does this mean that – "

"Look, it's not my fault!" McKay protested. "Ever since you've left I've just been thinking about toilets and why we need to find toilets and is it really so hard to believe? No, in fact I rather think it's inevitable. Maybe that was your plan after all and when – "

"RODNEY!"

"Just pointing out that it is _not_ my fault. It's nature's fault. And yours. And – "

"Ok, ok, I get the point," Weir said loudly, sounding exasperated. "Radek, where about did you say the facility was again?"

Radek gave directions as patiently as he could down the radio with McKay butting in every 2 seconds to query what he was saying. Eventually he managed to tell Dr Weir and his 'boss' exactly where the Ancient toilet was and Dr Weir thanked him.

"Although I can see another problem looming," she added with a hint of humour.

Radek tried not to groan. McKay had no such self-restraint. "What? What could _possibly_ be going wrong _now_?"

"Did anyone bring any toilet paper?"

~_Toilets~ Toilets~ Toilets~ Toilets~ Toilets~ Toilets~ Toilets~ Toilets~ Toilets~_

Damn, that last scene was hard to write! I just add that I found it _really_ difficult to write Radek, both literally (he's always Zelenka to me!) and character-wise. He's probably a bit OOC, especially considering the canon state of his and Rodney's relationship at this point but I tried XD

Stupidity aside, I hope you enjoyed it! And I know the whole 'technology in every surface which could be damaged easily' thing is quite unrealistic (or at least over the top) but hey – it's a bit of an unrealistic premise anyway :D

Love,

Hannanora-Potter

~x~x~x~


End file.
